a pondering

[southeastastra]

why do women get dressed up for men and wear make up when in the natural world it's the opposide?

Unless they live very isolated, I suspect there is always some degree of sperm competition.

The figures may not be absolutely accurate, but there seems to be a fairly high rate of children not born of their mother's partners in humans (and birds, etc).
One theory suggests that sperm from a non partner has a higher chance of conceiving a baby.
Or that in some cases women "settle" for the male that sticks around but have babies with the womaniser who gets to father lots of babies.

I think such musings and observations are interesting, but not to defend behaviour.

Not rtwt but if I remember my fashion theory right from uni (yes it exists!) western men originally were peacocks, although usually only the ones who could afford it. For example the particularly crazy ones in the 1700's were called Macaronis. Women weren't as elaborately dressed as fewer people saw them around. Then came industrialisation and for the men involved it wasn't practical to dress in such a flamboyant manner. The success of this section of society brought sober dressing into style and the crazier male clothing fell out of fashion. Of course everyone still wanted everyone else to know how rich they were so women started wearing the family success so to speak.
Disclaimer - this is basically a primary school version of a much more complicated and interesting piece of history. Hopefully a fashion historian will come along and explain properly.

The reason I think why mammals are generally drab in colour is because they don't have very good colour vision.

slugs

I think you are right. Concealed ovulation would probably allow for females to mate with more males.

I think there is a lot of violence towards promiscuous females during oestrus by the dominant male.
Concealing ovulation would make it harder to monopolise her as he would have to dedicate all his time to controlling her fertility (not just a few days).

Also there's the female menopause. I think humans are the only animals where the female has a substantial period of life left infertile. (Could be wrong on that though).

even the name of our species is male: homo=man. So homo sapiens is not gender neutral as a term.

erm, homo means 'same', as in homophone, homogenous homosexual.

But then again, concealed ovulation would mean that a man had to be attentive to his wife, have a lot of sex with her over the entire year, and not go far from home. And dare we say, keep her happy, so she wouldn't be tempted by any other men?

Homo meaning "man" is Latin. Homo meaning "the same" is Greek. But Romans had another word to express the qualities of a real manly man, and that word was "vir". Guess which words come from that.

another word to express the qualities of a real manly man, and that word was "vir". Guess which words come from that.

I'm a biologist working in a health related field, so "virulence" and "virus" are pretty much at the top of my guesses.

Homo meaning "man" is Latin. Homo meaning "the same" is Greek.

Didn't know that, so apologies to Alex, and thanks for being put straight.

The Latin for "man" gives us various words with nasty connotations? Now now, we aren't that kind of feminist here.

After quickly looking it up, "virus" and "virulent" both come from another Latin word, virus meaning "slime, poison". Whereas vir led to another word, virtus meaning the ideal qualities of a man--"valour, merit, moral perfection" (stop that snorting) which went to the French vertu and the English "virtue". And "virile", of course.

I am aware of homo as a Greek prefix meaning 'same, alike'. But in the case of homo sapiens it does mean "man". No apology necessary!

It is also true that 'man' originally just meant 'person, human being'. Guess what the default was?

This is why "woman" is not synonymous with "human".

I am finding slug's posts on hidden ovulation absolutely fascinating.

The amount of life left for humans after menopause wouldn't have been so very long until recently.
I'm not sure about an actual menopause, but IME several species of domestic animal have declining fertility with age whilst remaining fit and active.

Not so many people would have survived past menopause, but some were certainly capable of living a long life.
Life expectancy at birth can be a deceptive statistic.

It's speculative, but there is a claim around that menopause is actually good for a woman's children. The idea is that if she kept having kids but then died while the last ones were still young, they wouldn't have much chance of survival, but if she hangs around to support her last children and helps with the first grandchildren, she ends up with more surviving descendants. It akes a nice story, but some people say there are holes in it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandmother_hypothesis

makes not akes.

The amount of life left for humans after menopause wouldn't have been so very long until recently

I'm not saying people regularly lived to 80 but the main reason prehistoric life expectancy was so low was massive infant mortality.

Yes there's declining fertility with age for animals but it doesn't take the form of menopause - it really does seem to be different in humans.

tei
I think current thinking is that menopause developed for a mix of reasons.
The grandkids benefit from having an attentive grandma (increased survival).
Children take a long time to raise. So a child born to a woman when she is 50/55 might not have their mother around for the next 10 years.